Robert Mugge: Non-Fiction, Documentary Film
MusicMusic filmmaker Robert Mugge has directed three-dozen nonfiction films, a majority of them explorations of traditional American music. In his new memoir, Notes from the Road: A Filmmaker’s Journey through American Music, he describes the making of 25 of his key films, and in this hourlong presentation, he and Nashville-based music journalist Ron Wynn will screen clips from Mugge’s riveting portraits of Sun Ra, Al Green, Sonny Rollins, and Rubén Blades (with Linda Ronstadt) and discuss his approaches as both filmmaker and author. According to critic Ken Tucker on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, “The stories he tells go well beyond anecdotes about musicians. He opens us up to the whole world of documentary filmmaking. Notes from the Road is the best thing I’ve read about what it’s like to direct films since Sidney Lumet’s 1996 classic, Making Movies.” And in a “starred review,” Kirkus Reviews calls Mugge's memoir, “A vibrant, entertaining panorama of music-making and the picaresque struggle to capture it on film.”